An Alabama inmate who had previously escaped from prison twice was charged The July 1996 cold-case kidnapping and murder of a 7-year-old Kentucky girl this week, authorities announced at a news conference.
Robert Scott Froberg was charged Thursday in a federal criminal complaint in connection with Morgan Violi’s murder resulting in kidnapping resulting in death.
Froberg was arrested in August 1996 for an unrelated crime and was in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections when he was charged in Morgan’s death.
U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky Kyle G. Bumgarner said at a news conference Friday that advances in forensic testing helped link Froberg to the crime.
Morgan was playing with her 6-year-old friend at Colony Apartments in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when she was abducted, according to a federal affidavit supporting the criminal complaint. An adult witnessed the abduction and described the suspect as a man driving a maroon van.
Morgan’s body was found three months after the abduction in the woods near a barn in Tennessee.
The case “haunted” Bowling Green for nearly 30 years, Bumgarner said.
“Morgan’s kidnapping and murder changed her family’s life forever,” he said. “Morgan’s family is left with unanswered questions: who, how, why. They long for those answers; they long for closure.”
Froberg faces life in prison or the death penalty, Bumgarner said.
In 1996, Froberg was serving a lengthy sentence with the Alabama Department of Corrections after being convicted of a 1988 robbery in Montgomery, the affidavit states. He escaped from prison in April 1996.
While on the lam, he stole an elderly woman’s car and drove to Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, authorities said. In May 1996, he was arrested after a mother called police to say a man was hiding in a wooden house used by neighborhood children.
He was taken to the Northumberland County Jail in Pennsylvania, but escaped in July 1996 by climbing a rain gutter to the roof and then using a cable to descend to the ground, according to the affidavit.
About a week after escaping from Northumberland County Jail, a maroon van connected to Morgan’s kidnapping was stolen from behind a residence in Ohio, according to the affidavit. Froberg’s parents lived less than half a mile from where the van was stolen, Bumgarner said.
Detectives continued to work on the case over the years, Bumgarner said. A database used to store fiber evidence, DNA breakthroughs and DNA profiles led to Froberg, the affidavit states. A fiber found in Morgan’s hair was traced to the stolen van, and a strand of hair found in the van was later linked to Froberg by DNA.
Earlier this week, detectives interviewed Froberg. Bumgarner said Froberg admitted that after he escaped from the county jail, he traveled through Kentucky to Huntsville, Alabama, where he intended to hide with a male nurse he met in an Alabama jail.
He admitted to abducting Morgan, strangling her, then leaving her naked body in the woods, the affidavit states. He said he threw her clothes in the dumpster because he thought they might contain DNA evidence, according to the affidavit.
Froberg stayed with the nurse for about a week before traveling to Pennsylvania, Bumgarner said, where he was arrested in connection with the August 1996 Alabama prison escape.
